


history repeating

by sparxwrites



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Body Horror, Possession, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 01:05:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7956112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If I were you,” says Percival, mildly - though he can feel the smoke building inside him, black in his lungs and throat and mouth, clouding his eyes. “I’d put it back. Or else it’ll be the last meal you’ll ever eat.”</p><p>(In which Percy and Craven Edge's confrontation goes... a little differently.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	history repeating

“If I were you,” says Percival, mildly - though he can feel the smoke building inside him, black in his lungs and throat and mouth, clouding his eyes. “I’d put it back. Or else it’ll be the last meal you’ll ever eat.”

His shadow rears up behind him, a monstrous, snapping thing full of gunpowder and teeth and _rage_. He keeps it tightly leashed, most of the time, almost as tight as he leashes himself, but sometimes… sometimes it’s good to let it run free. “I will find an abyss so _deep_  and so _far_  you will never taste a  _drop_ of blood again.”

The swords is silent, dark and serrated and menacing where it stands in the snow. It seems to suck in the light around it, draw the shadows a little closer to itself than anything natural should, like some kind of strange anti-glow. Percy fancies he can hear it growling, a little, a thin, low rumble of _hhrr_  just at the edge of his hearing - almost nothing, compared to the way his own voice carries dark and deep across the crisp snow and bare-branch trees.

But Craven Edge itself? It says nothing.

Snarling, he reaches out to grab the blade, curling a bare hand around it and baring his teeth as his shadow climbs ever-higher. It’s so _easy_  to stoke the flame, to fan the smoke Orthax left behind with his own bitterness and rage and self-loathing, and it feels so _good_. “I know you’re in there! I know you’re listening. Put. It. _Back!”_

He realises, too late, that it is not the sword’s hilt he’s grabbed, but the blade. Sharp, serrated onyx against bare skin. He can feel the bite of it through his palm, teeth sunk into the flesh beneath. Blood leaks out from the circle of his fingers, a thin streak of red against a backdrop of black, and for a moment Percy knows only _fear_.

Not again. Please, _not again_.

 _Oh yes_ , purrs a voice inside his head - different to Orthax, more _substantial_ , a deep, gravelly rumble he can feel inside his chest. For a moment, he forgets how to breathe.  _You’ll do nicely, I think_.

“I’m not your wielder,” says Percy, sharply, panic tinging the edges of his voice. He wants to let go, but his fingers have gone senseless, frozen, as he watches his blood run crimson down the length of the sword. The droplets are consumed before they get a chance to hit the snow, sucked in beneath the dark, glossy surface before they can fall. “I am _not_  your wielder and, if I have my way, no one ever will be again.”

Craven Edge _laughs_  at that, with a sound like crushed viscera and boiling tar - and Percy becomes aware, abruptly, that his lungs are filling not with smoke, this time, but with oil, shiny-slick and thick and drowning. _Oh, no_ , the sword purrs, dropping from numb, nerveless fingers as Percy falls to his knees, scrabbling at his own throat with bitten-ragged nails and trembling hands. _Not my new wielder_.

Percy buckles forward into the snow, hands and knees, gasping and retching around the oil rising to flood the back of his mouth. It’s slick and bitter against his tongue, coating his mouth and lungs and throat, and he thinks abruptly of tar-covered birds, grounded, wheezing as they die in the dirt. No matter how much he vomits, there always seems to be _more_ , filth dredged up from somewhere deep within him in an endless wave that leaves him shaking in the snow.

 _“My new weapon,”_ Craven Edge says, softly, with Percy’s mouth and throat, drowned in dripping black though they are. He blinks, and the oil covers his eyes, too, in an onyx film of rainbow-slick - and through his distorted vision he sees his own hand reach for the pistol at his hip, curling around the familiar weight of it as Craven Edge sighs quiet, victorious pleasure. “ _Yes_. Yes. I think we’ll have fun together, you and I…”

**Author's Note:**

> written as a result of [this anon's message](http://sparxwrites.tumblr.com/post/149943755449/1-of-2-i-had-an-odd-daydream-i-thought-might) about their daydreaming over on my writing blog.


End file.
